As newspapers and media companies continue to struggle with overall revenue declines and as the economy has many small and medium sized businesses watching their advertising budgets much more closely,it is critical that media publishers diversify their interactive product portfolios in such a way that they focus on offering the local SMBs competitive, effective and measurable interactive advertising solutions.

For many media publishers, and newspapers in particular, a large majority of the interactive revenues that are generated are tied to either classified advertising products (which continue to suffer against strong competition like craigslist, autotrader, etc…) and static display banner advertising sales. This is important to mention because there has been a multitude of research published in the last year that points to a coming steep decline in the popularity of online static display banner ads.

As we saw in a report issued late last year from Borrell and Associates titled "Say Goodbye to YellowPages”, revenues tied to interactive display ads are expected to decline as SMBs continue to graduate and focus more and more on effective, targeted, and trackable interactive advertising mediums. Online video commercials have emerged as the fastest-growing online ad format for small businesses. By 2012, Borrell Associates Inc. expect video advertising to surpass all other formats, including banners and paid search.

Also mentioned in the Borrell report is the fact that newspapers, along with the local yellow pages companies and broadcast television companies not only the largest local sales forces, but they have spent tremendous effort in the past several years to re-train their sales forcesto focus more on selling interactive advertising solutions. Add to all this the fact that video advertising demands 3X higher CPM rates from advertisers, it is a "no-brainier" for media companies to shift focus to offering online video advertising products within their interactive product portfolios.

With this expected change comes opportunity for companies that are in the interactive space offering innovative and effective advertising solutions to partner with major media companies.One such particular online video company that we'vecovered many times in the past, Mixpo, just announced partnerships with 5 major local media publishers.

Glenn Pingul, VP of Marketing for Mixpo, told ReelSEO,”We are very focused on the local advertisers. One of the best ways to reach them is to partner with those that have tremendous assets in this space. Newspapers and media publishers have audience reach, local sales forces, and inventory that they can leverage. Our platform allows them to leverage those assets with something as exciting as online video. Our solutions enable those media publishers to not only deliver a rich advertising experience, but one that is actionable, and built for performance and measurability.”

Mixpo's New Media Publisher Partners Are:

NBC Local Media, comprised of nine NBC-owned-and-operated television stations, NBC Everywhere, LX.TV, and Skycastle Entertainment. This network of sites covers the country's largest cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, Dallas/Fort Worth, the San Francisco Bay-area, San Diego, and Connecticut.

"We are focused on providing the best content for the local community and that includes offering a better way for advertisers to promote locally,” says Mort Greenberg, vice president of sales for NBC Local Media. "Video advertising is hot and Mixpo has a great technology for enabling us to serve our local market advertisers and audience.”

Freedom Communications, headquartered in Irvine, Calif., is a national privately owned information and entertainment company of print publications, broadcast television stations and interactive businesses. The company's portfolio includes 33 daily and 77 weekly newspapers, including The Orange County Register, magazines and other specialty publications, plus news, information and entertainment websites to complement its print and broadcast properties. Freedom's newspaper publications have a combined circulation of more than one million subscribers. The broadcast stations—five CBS, two ABC, and one CW network affiliates—reach more than 3.5 million households across the country.

"Mixpo's online video advertising solution is helping us get better response rates for our advertisers. We are providing more value to our customers both through display and search advertisers,” said Mike Hodges, vice president of sales at Freedom Interactive. "Finally a solution for our advertisers that offers a call to action for their display ads!”

TownNews.com, which is majority owned by Lee Enterprises and is a premier publisher of daily and weekly online specialty publications. TownNews.com hosts more than 1500 online publications and offers a wide variety of products and services to U.S. Newspapers.

"As readership moves online, newspapers have a great opportunity to succeed and take their existing advertisers with them," saidMarc Wilson, general manager and CEO at TownNews.com. "We focus on technologies that help newspapers reinvent themselves and the Mixpo platform helps them do just that. We're extremely excited to be partnering with Mixpo and helping our newspapers achieve their higher sales potential.”

Fisher Communications, Inc., which is a Seattle-based communications company that owns or manages 13 full-power television stations, 7 low-power television stations, and 8 radio stations in the western United States including: KOMO TV – ABC in Seattle, KATU TV – ABC in Portland, Oregon, and KBAK TV – CBS in Bakersfield, California.

"Many of our partners are traditional, local media companies – across Newspaper, TV, Cable and Radio segments – that understand how online video advertising can help them transform their businesses online,”said Mixpo's Anupam Gupta. "Our partners offer premium local content and a local sales presence that keeps them directly connected with local audiences and advertisers. Combining those significant assets with our online VideoAd platform, helps them deliver very compelling local advertising solutions.”

Congratulations to our friends at Mixpo and congratulations to the partners ;-)

About the Author - Mark R Robertson

Mark Robertson is the Founder and Publisher of ReelSEO, an online information resource dedicated to the fusion of video, technology, social media, search, and internet marketing. He is a YouTube Certified, video marketing consultant and video marketing expert, popular speaker, and considered to be a passionate leader within the online video and search marketing industries. View All Posts By - Mark R Robertson

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